According to two papers published in the NEJM Minimally invasive radical hysterectomy was associated with lower rates of disease-free survival and overall survival than open abdominal radical hysterectomy among women with early-stage cervical cancer.

This population-based analysis – the first of its kind in the literature - demonstrates a higher postoperative mortality in low-volume hospitals for patients undergoing oesophageal, gastric, pancreatic and rectal cancer resection in Switzerland. Hence, such operations should preferably be performed in high-volume hospitals.

An international, randomised, double-blind, phase 3 trial shows, that Fulvestrant has superior efficacy and is a preferred treatment option for patients with hormone receptor-positive locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer who have not received previous endocrine therapy compared with a third-generation aromatase inhibitor, a standard of care for first-line treatment of these patients.

This document reviews the different steps in cardiovascular monitoring and decision-makig before, during and after anticancer treatment with potential cardiovascular side-effects. This document aims to assist professionals involved in the treatment of patients with cancer and survivors by providing an expert consensus reading current standards of care for these individuals.

SAKK Newsletter No 1 - März 2016

31-03-2016 16:48

Dear readers

For the first time, our Newsletter is sent to you in an online version instead of the former PDF-document. With this change, we hope that our readers find quicker what they are interested in. In addition, many texts can now be found on our website – it allows you to re-access information on specific topics when needed.Furthermore, information on trials and accrual is now updated by the end of every month – a better service for our investigators, trial nurses and member centres. We hope you like our newsletter as much as we do – for comments, inputs or questions, please contact: claudia.herren@sakk.ch.

These updated ACS guidelines provide evidence-based recommendations for breast cancer screening for women at average risk of breast cancer. These recommendations should be considered by physicians and women in discussions about breast cancer screening.

Summary from the Lancet

Background

Bisphosphonates have profound effects on bone physiology, and could modify the process of metastasis. We undertook collaborative meta-analyses to clarify the risks and benefits of adjuvant bisphosphonate treatment in breast cancer.

BACKGROUND

Multiple myeloma cells uniformly overexpress CD38. We studied daratumumab, a CD38-targeting, human IgG1κ monoclonal antibody, in a phase 1–2 trial involving patients with relapsed myeloma or relapsed myeloma that was refractory to two or more prior lines of therapy.

From the NEJM: In patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, the addition of pertuzumab to trastuzumab and docetaxel, as compared with the addition of placebo, significantly improved the median overall survival to 56.5 months and extended the results of previous analyses showing the efficacy of this drug combination.

Reported by John Carol FierceBiotech Research: Researchers at the Wistar Institute say that they have zeroed in on a potential new therapeutic target for a subset of the most aggressive cases of ovarian cancer. And they're heralding the discovery as a big step toward the first effective therapy for the lethal disease.

SAN FRANCISCO – Four abstracts with significant insight for the screening and treatment of gastrointestinal cancers will be presented at the 2015 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, taking place January 15-17 in San Francisco. These key studies explore the activity of immunotherapies in advanced stomach cancer and pancreatic cancer, ramucirumab as a second-line treatment for liver cancer, and a recently-developed fecal tumor screening test for colorectal cancer.

PHILADELPHIA — Among patients who had an unidentifiable lung nodule detected by a chest CT scan, testing sputum for a panel of three microRNA (miRNA) biomarkers successfully distinguished early-stage lung cancers from nonmalignant nodules most of the time, according to a study published in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Darmstadt, Germany, September 27, 2014 – Merck Serono, the biopharmaceutical division of Merck, announced the winners of the first Grant for Oncology Innovation (GOI), who will receive grants totaling €1 million. The GOI is an initiative funded by Merck Serono, a division of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, to identify and support innovative projects to advance research on personalised treatment for solid tumours. The 2014 winners were formally announced at an awards ceremony coinciding with the annual meeting of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2014 in Madrid, Spain. Launched in September 2013 at the European Cancer Congress (ECCO-ESMO-ESTRO) 2013 in Amsterdam, the GOI aims to support researchers who are leading innovative projects that have the potential to advance research for the personalized treatment of solid tumors.

These Guidelines were developed by the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), the European Society of Surgical Oncology (ESSO) and the European Society of Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO) and are published jointly in the Annals of Oncology, the European Journal of Surgical Oncology and Radiotherapy & Oncology.

According to two papers published in the NEJM Minimally invasive radical hysterectomy was associated with lower rates of disease-free survival and overall survival than open abdominal radical hysterectomy among women with early-stage cervical cancer.